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Not My BookDecember 20, 2010 Mired in a messy manuscript or butting heads with a cloddish writer, some editors console themselves by repeating a mantra: "It's not my book, not my book, not my book." This works, up to a point. The job is completed, and within a few weeks you've forgotten all about it and its author. In the general scheme of a freelancer's life, one nasty job is not a big deal. I'm currently working on the hands-down worst manuscript I've ever been assigned by a reputable publisher. I tried chanting to myself: Not my book, not my book . . . Didn't work. This book is so bad, it's appallingly bad, infuriatingly bad, demoralizingly bad. It's a 1,200-page biography of a minor figure in 20th-century U.S. journalism. Justice could have been done to this individual's life in 400 pages or so. Why is this book so long? It's long because it's unfocused. The author doesn't know what story she wants to tell, and if you don't know what story you want to tell, you have no way of deciding what must be included and what can be left out. Some 180 of this book's 1,200 pages are endnotes, and the overwhelming majority of the notes cite primary sources: letters, telegrams, newspaper articles, and the like. The result is a long, very long, pastiche of quotes with no storyline holding them together. What makes this frustrating is that some glimmers of story can be spotted in the pastiche: a decent book could be written from this material, I'm sure of it. This manuscript reads like a first sprawling draft -- which is why for the first few hundred pages I kept hoping that the production editor was going to call and say, "You're not going to believe this, but I accidentally sent you an unedited draft of the book. I'm so sorry!" No such luck. So I slogged onward, through page after page of amateurish prose (no one ever says anything in this book; they bleat, confide, crow, cackle, and worse), and finally, around page 700 or so, my curiosity got the better of me. Why was this book so bad? Why was the publisher publishing it? I'd never heard of the author, so I Googled. Turns out her only previous book-length work was the letters of a Famous Person, which she edited. In effect this is her first book. So where the hell was her editor?? The author might not realize just how bad this book is, but no way could the editor be that ignorant. Remember the emperor who went parading in his skivvies, convinced that he was garbed in opulent robes? The emperor's clothiers were unscrupulous, and his courtiers -- and most of his people -- were willing to be fooled. Editors at big publishing houses don't work in a vacuum. Other people have to know that this book isn't ready for prime time, but it's moving toward the limelight anyway. Not knowing why, or who's in whose pocket, I couldn't say, "Guys, this book sucks, you know that?" But I couldn't say nothing either, so I did mention the lack of focus, the interminable length, and my feeling that the author hadn't really grappled with her subject. No response, but I didn't expect one. The only encouraging sign is that I can't find any advance buzz about this book. That's unusual. I'm hoping it means it can still be pulled out of production and either overhauled or deep-sixed. It's not my book, true, but I've wasted dozens of hours on it, and though I'm getting paid for those hours, I can't help wishing they'd been used to better effect.
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